Course Web Page for CS638-1 Projects in Virtual Reality, Spring 2011

As opposed to sending a mass email, I thought I would post my some final thoughts on here. I started this post before sending grades and then for some reason thought it wasn’t worth posting. I have since reconsidered, so here it is, the super delayed final class post.

Grades

Grading for this class is very difficult. In the end there was a decently sized excel file that was used to calculated everyone’s grades. As this process was more quantitative than qualitative, some people lost points on rather silly things. For the most part I think this process turned out favorably for most people, but feel free to email me with any questions.

Evaluations

I think the thing I was most pleased with reading the evaluations was that almost everyone was happy with how their final project turned out. Pretty much everyone felt like there were more things they could have added, things they could have improved on, but were pleased with the result. I also think having the final projects open to the public ended up being a positive experience all around (for the students, building, and public) and may lead to more events being planned like this in the future.

The criticisms of the class were rather spread out. On of the common requests for more lectures, especially ones on computer graphics. Another common criticism was that the room was not well suited for discussions. People also wish we had gone into greater details on the internals of the CAVE. Also, people wish we could have tied the lectures with the projects. Reviews were very mixed on issues such as, should we have a textbook, should the class have tests and quizzes.

Moving Forward

As you may have already noticed, the access to WID has been removed. If you want to go over and test things (especially now that everything is up an running) just send me an email. I will be splitting my time between CS and WID for the summer months. Also, if you would like to do a VR reading group, let me know and I can do my best to facilitate it.

Also, feel free to post any photos, videos, etc on your project pages on here (I haven’t taken away anyone’s access to the website). It might stand as a good archive of all of the work you did for the final months of the class.

In Conclusion

I want to again thank everyone for taking this class. As was said the first day, this class was very experimental. I feel like everyone did a wonderful job working through all of the technical challenges and I hope you felt like this class was all and all a very rewarding experience. Feel free to email me about any questions and I wish you all the best of luck.

Projects in Virtual Reality Final Presentations
Saturday, May 7th, 2011 — 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
The Forum at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery

The Galaxy Map Project Time: 1:00 PMPresented by the WuCave Clan: Joe Kohlmann, Russel Mommaerts, Rebecca Hudson, and Nathalie Cheng.
We created an immersive, interactive map of the Milky Way galaxy. Users explore
celestial bodies such as nebulae, solar systems, planets, and the galaxy itself
through an interactive zooming user interface. Slick transitions and a dynamic
soundtrack introduce viewers to the grand scale and beauty of interstellar space.Link:DescriptionBlog

NetCAVE
2:00 PMPresented by Nathan Mitchell, Reid Sawtell, Jitt Tiachunpun, and Alex Langenfeld.
NetCAVE is an attempt to recreate the classic NetHack and Rogue games inside a CAVE
environment. This includes a grid style movement scheme, dynamic lighting that only
illuminates areas near the user, and a simple combat system with the dungeon
residents.Link:DescriptionBlog

Jeepers Creepers
3:00 PMPresented by Jon Kusko, Leo Bezroukov, Rachina Ahuja, and Andrego Halim.
Our project is an interactive first person shooter game. The objective is to defend
yourself against monsters and other creatures while building up your score by
killing them. You will have to navigate your way through a creepy environment and
beware of traps and surprises.Link:DescriptionBlog

Gypsy Space Muffins
4:00 PMPresented by Aaron Bartholomew, Liana Zorn, Scott Hahn, and Nick Rehberg.
Our project is a music visualization game. Mind-blowing and psychedelic environment
that visualizes music through insane particle and rendering effects. You must
collect creatures that swim through this environment in order to unlock the secrets
of the universe. This system can visualize any arbitrary MP3 file, so bring any song
you want (preferably flash drive).Link: DescriptionBlog

Here are my expectations for the presentations: I would like each group to create an electronic presentation (powerpoint) that consists of the following: Introduction Introduce everyone in your group Briefly describe what your project is Describe why you selected this project Each Person Describe your contributions to the project What kinds of difficulties you ran […]

Hi Everyone, Thought I would let you know that at the moment I am stranded in the Denver airport. The flight has been delayed 4 times and is now scheduled to leave at 1am. I am really hoping it still goes and I can just show up to class tomorrow a little sleep deprived. If […]

As a reminder, the Mechdyne computers are off limits until tuesday, but the 3 BrennanLab computers are completely fine to use. Things in the lab are looking good for both the CAVE and the DevWall to be back up and running by Tuesday. Now for some fun kinect images (yes the hands are super gigantic). […]